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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28494816">Caught in a Landslide</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlyepigrams/pseuds/gentlyepigrams'>gentlyepigrams</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Inception (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:14:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28494816</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlyepigrams/pseuds/gentlyepigrams</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A very basic premise: what if a mind thief and her victim have to share a hotel room?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ariadne/Robert Fischer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Caught in a Landslide</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Between the Fischer funeral and some sports thing that Ariadne would know more about if she'd been paying attention to anything but inception and some government conference, it was like there wasn't a single hotel room anywhere in LA right now. If Saito had been thinking ahead, he wouldn't have just bought the airline, he would have bought the hotel chain too. Right now she was waiting for the hotel clerk to settle where she was staying. At the other end of the counter, somene else seemed to be having the same discussion.</p><p>"No," Robert Fischer said, the exhale sounding something more sighlike than petulant, "my reservation was last-minute." Clearly he was used to someone else taking care of these things. "I'll wait."</p><p>Ariadne knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she'd proven more than once during inception that she wasn't any good at not sticking her nose in. "Presidential suite?" she asked.</p><p>Fischer looked up, taking a moment to recognize Ariadne from the plane. "Yeah," he said, throwing up his hands slightly in a universal signal for <em>what can you do?</em>.</p><p>Ariadne nodded in agreement, as if she had a lot of experience with reservation trouble in expensive hotels.</p><p>"It's a huge suite. They could put both of us in there and we probably wouldn't even see each other." She could almost see the idea germinating in Fischer's brain, behind those huge blue eyes, in the moment before he said it. "Share?"</p><p>It was a horrible idea, likely to get her caught, but Ariadne had to know. Her smile was uncertain. "Sure. Why not? It's just for one night."</p><p>That was how she found herself sitting across a fabulous room service spread in the Presidential suite of LA's most exclusive hotel from Robert Fischer, talking about everything and nothing. She had a cover story, of course, one involving an architecture internship--the one Miles had been using to cover her absence from school, so it checked out--and a reason to be in LA. Robert was listening more than talking. He'd mentioned his reason for being in LA, but other than relating the chain of disasters with the planes that had culminated in him being alone in the suite--the suite he'd been supposed to share with "Uncle Peter"--he didn't seem to want to talk about himself, or much at all.</p><p>Finally, Ariadne reached across the table to lay a hand on his arm. "Hey, are you okay?"</p><p>Robert was looking at his hands, a million miles away as far as Ariadne could tell. He glanced up, startling blue eyes focused on her, "I'm fine. I'm sorry. I'm just not good company. I've got a lot on my mind."</p><p>It occurred to Ariadne to wonder whether Saito had arranged this, too. Still, after everything that had happened with Mal in the dreamworld, she felt responsible for what the team had done. "Do you want to talk about it?"</p><p>"I don't even know where to start if I did." Robert shook his head. "It's just--you get hung up on something sometimes, and then it occurs to you that it doesn't have to be that way, and it changes everything."</p><p>Ariadne's breath caught a little in her throat. Her fingers slid down Robert's wrist to rest on his hand.</p><p>"There's a whole world out there. I could do anything. What would you do if you were in my shoes, Ariadne?"</p><p>It took Ariadne a moment to respond. Her eyes were too wide and her smile was uncertain. Questions swirling in her mind, she managed to say what she was thinking, what she'd thought before she went back to the warehouse in Paris to work on dreamscape architecture: "Seize your dreams."</p><p>Robert's breath caught in his own throat as his gaze met Ariadne's. His free hand moved up to cup her cheek and he leaned in to brush his lips across hers. And this, this was creation, this was architecture like nothing in the dreamscape, because what she was building was real.</p><p>But Robert was already pulling back, head bowing, cheeks flushed. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm out of line. I wouldn't--" Ariadne didn't let him finish the sentence; she was already leaning forward, lips slightly parted, to kiss him again.</p><p>From there, it happened in a blur. All Ariadne remembered afterwards were fragments: the feel of Egyptian cotton and the tension of his suspenders on the backs of her hands as her fingers traced their way up Robert's chest, his warm mouth on her breast through the fabric of her bra, the sound he made as he slid into her, long fingers splayed on her hips as he held her in place against the couch. And later, the taste of her on his lips as they kissed, tracing her way down his chest and stomach with her tongue, and then the taste of them both on him as she wrapped her mouth around him. The sounds he made when he came, and afterwards, the mingled scents of sex and expensive cologne, and finally, the feel of arms around her as she drifted into sleep, a slumber that had nothing to do with sedatives or machines or anything but sated, blissful exhaustion.</p><p>When Ariadne woke, it was morning, sunlight filtering in past the curtains, and Robert was gone. How much of the last twenty-four hours was real and how much a dream was blurred in her mind. There were three texts from Arthur that she'd missed while she slept, and a note on the bedside table signed with an R telling her when he'd be back.</p><p>She reached into her handbag for the bishop, but the door opened and Robert was there, so she never saw which way it fell.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the first fic I ever wrote for a fandom; it's been sitting in my Google Docs since about two weeks after the movie opened. Title is obviously from Bohemian Rhapsody.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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